Coen premieres a stark 'Macbeth,' with Denzel and McDormand
The IndependentFor free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Joel Coen in his first solo outing as a filmmaker, premiered a strikingly stark, black-and-white adaptation of Shakespeare s “Macbeth," with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand at the New York Film Festival on Friday. “The Tragedy of Macbeth," which on Friday night was to open the 59th New York Film Festival, isn't a mud-and-blood adaptation set on medieval Scottish fields, but a minimalist, noir nightmare, cloaked in shadow and fog, and boxed in an academy-ratio square frame filled with austere, expressionist imagery. The eagerness for “The Tragedy of Macbeth” was owed in part to it being Coen's first film without his brother, Ethan, who has recently withdrawn from filmmaking. He wrote the screenplay adaptation envisioning something less like Orson Welles' 1948 “Macbeth” or Roman Polanski's 1971 version, and more with the austerity of a Carl Theodor Dryer film and the chiaroscuro glow of F.W.
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